Page 24 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“You don't understand,” he said, voice shaking. “You don't know what it's like in that hut. The noise. The pressure. Everyone watching, everyone waiting for me to crack the next cipher, solve the next puzzle, save the next thousand lives. And if I fail, if I'm three hours too slow, people die. Real people, with families, with names I'll never know. They die because I wasn't fast enough.”

“I know exactly what that's like.”

“No, you don't. You pull a trigger and it's over. One shot, one target, done. I sit in a room full of noise and I try to find patterns in chaos and every single day I calculate how many people are dead because of me. How many ships sank while I was sleeping. How many soldiers walked into ambushes because I missed a single letter in a transmission.”

“You think killing is simple?” The words came out rough. “You think I pull a trigger and walk away clean?”

“I think you at least know who you've killed. I don't even get that. I just get numbers. Statistics. Body counts in morning briefings that I translate into German and wonder which ones I caused.”

The raw honesty of it stopped me cold. I stared at him, this thin, shaking man who carried the weight of the war in his head,and I felt something shift in my chest. Something I didn't want to name.

“Take my coat,” I said.

“What?”

I was already shrugging it off. “You're freezing. Take it.”

“I don't need your coat.”

“I don't care what you need. Take it.”

“I said no.”

“And I said take the bloody coat, Art.”

His name on my tongue stopped us both. I hadn't meant to use it. Had been careful, so careful, to maintain the distance of ranks and surnames. But it was out now, hanging in the frozen air between us.

Art stared at me. Then, slowly, he reached out and took the coat.

He put it on with stiff movements, the fabric swallowing his thin frame, sleeves hanging past his hands. But some of the rigid tension left his shoulders as the warmth hit him.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. Then, with a ghost of his earlier bite: “Sergeant.”

“Don't mention it.” I crossed my arms against the cold, feeling the chill bite through my uniform shirt. “And I mean that literally. Don't mention it to anyone.”

“Worried about your reputation?”

“Worried about yours. Last thing you need is rumours that you're accepting favours from security personnel.”

Something flickered in his expression. “Is that what this is? A favour?”

“It's a coat. Don't overthink it.”

“I overthink everything. It's what I do.”

“Then maybe try stopping. Just for tonight.”

He laughed, a short, humourless sound. “You sound like Ruth.”

“God forbid.”

“The work you do,” I said, before I could think better of it. “The intercepts you crack. When you decode something that leads to an operation, something that puts men in the field... do you ever think about who ends up pulling the trigger?”

Art went very still. “Why are you asking?”

“Because Finch gave me a briefing today. There's a mission coming. High-value target behind enemy lines.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes. “Assassination.”